I am utterly confused. If AGI is around the corner, this means that the economy is going to be destroyed and money are going to lose their meaning. Who is going to buy your AI gadget? Why spend money on that and Windsurf?
1. The people promising AGI are lying 2. The people promising AGI don't know what they're saying 3. The people promising AGI are hedging against AGI not eventuating but some intermediate value emerging. This is the most charitable read, but also totally at odds with getting people to invest, since the investment is predicated on AGI achievement
The correct answer is almost certainly "some people are silly, some people are grifting, some people think AGI is coming, but all the investment certainly benefits from people conflating AGI with a very good product instead of a world-changing achievement".
Eric Schmidt imagining AGI and then speculating that people will like, still be churning out apps, as if humans will need to do that sort of menial labour, just blew my mind and made me question many of the stories I had heard about his intelligence.
I dunno - I am rather thinking that they are hedging.
Also it's worth noting that if automation in the right areas has its intended effects, costs of living should come down, making the cost of a human less, not more[0], and moving the bar for what is worth automating higher and higher
[0] modulo policy decisions that raise the cost of living back up
> Interesting - how do you reconcile mass unemployment with working economy? (And this is honest question from one that is invested and hopeful that their life savings won’t evaporate overnight)
Define "working economy." Ultimately, "the economy" is the market and the market is about satisfying the desires of the people with the money to participate.
The economy will keep working if there's mass unemployment. You reconcile that by realizing the economy isn't a system for taking care of everyone, or optimizing for mass human flourishing. Unemployment just means the money-havers have no use for you anymore, and you can go FOAD.